Quote from: Jonathan Ross on February 09, 2010, 00:38

Hi SJ,

 Who said you can't get in. I know 200 photographers that are shooting Macro stock photography now that weren't two years ago and that's just me. Why sell yourself short if you have what the market wants they will represent you. They still do. New agencies and people being signed to Getty and Corbis everyday. This is a fallacy that has no warrant except for the fact that not EVERYONE can get in. That is the position I think you really should defend.

Best,
Jonathan

I said I can't get in.  Because I didn't get in.  Tried.  And I'm not/wasn't talking about today.  I'm talking about 5-10 years ago.  That's when the boat sailed.

And BTW, the irony that we microstockers are faced with similar issues that macro photographers were a few years ago is not lost on a number of us.   However, like Sean, I applied to Corbis and Getty over 5 years ago before joining the micros and was rejected.

You guys must be good. I didn't even get rejected, they didn't answer! I tried again after a year and don't even get the courtesy of a rejection email.

That's why I'm working for Alamy.

Excuse me guys but as macrosaur i've something to say ...

1 - If Getty or Corbis rejected your portfolios is for a simple reason : they felt your images are either not good enough for them or have simply nothing special to add to what they're already selling.

RM agencies want creative photos, not holiday snapshots or copies of famous images they've in store since the '80s.
The sad thing is also they've lots of crap as well but it's usually stuff shot years ago that today sound a bit dated.


2 - Why RM agencies should invest on you as long as your portfolio is nothing to write home about ?
I don't mean your images suck, your images can probably be much better than the ones they're selling now, the issue there is maybe they're not as original and as creative as they want.

Creativity cannot be judjed or classified, it's something you either have or not, and if you look at your pictures and can't see anything wrong than maybe the only place you can belong is iStock or mabe Alamy since they don't edit.


3 - Why you keep comparing apples and oranges ?
The RM market can NOT disappear for the simple reason they sell anything including copyrighted logos, news, editorial, historic images, whatever under the sun.

Microstock is just a niche of the whole stock market and a very small one because of the many limitations
about copyright and model/property releases etc

Dug this out of my email, dated 12/28/05...

"Thank you for your submission to Getty Images, and giving us the opportunity to review your imagery.  However, after careful consideration, our submission review team has decided that your work does not match our needs at this time.  You may like to consider getting in touch with PACA (The Picture Archive Council of America), at www.stockindustry.org, who will be able to direct you to other Stock Agencies who might be interested in reviewing your images."

It doesn't mean your images suck, it can simply mean they had a look and thought "yet another guy  shooting business/lifestyle".

You can't blame them, there's so much people shooting the same stuff as you and Yuri and what you see on Getty is usually
pretty expensive stuff done by professionals investing lots of money on this, you can't easily compete with them or adding
something new and special unless you're very talented and gifted.

Joining Getty is every photographer's dream.
They must be flooded with applications.

You guys must be good. I didn't even get rejected, they didn't answer! I tried again after a year and don't even get the courtesy of a rejection email.

Don't take it personally, even when you are with them they don't answer emails, I learnt a long time ago the only way to get a response is by phonecall.

Quote from: sjlocke on February 09, 2010, 13:06

Dug this out of my email, dated 12/28/05...

"Thank you for your submission to Getty Images, and giving us the opportunity to review your imagery.  However, after careful consideration, our submission review team has decided that your work does not match our needs at this time.  You may like to consider getting in touch with PACA (The Picture Archive Council of America), at www.stockindustry.org, who will be able to direct you to other Stock Agencies who might be interested in reviewing your images."

It does make you wonder ... did the 'careful consideration' involve actually looking at the submissions at any point in the process? If they'd had any sense they'd have been welcoming all the best microstockers with open arms and neutralising their threat with 'golden handcuff' deals.

Funnily enough the date of that rejection coincided almost exactly with the point at which it all went so tragically wrong for Getty. Back then the share price was at an all-time high but just two years later had dropped over 70% and they were vulnerable to a buyout on the cheap.

I just hope that their arrogance and the ignorance of the market that they displayed then isn't rearing its ugly head again in the shape of Thinkstock.

I disagree.
Getty is a brand known for top quality and top prices.

They can't open the door to young wannabee unless their portfolios are at least on par with Getty's minimum standards.

The alternative is Alamy where 90% of their collection is junk.

And i can't see anything arrogant in that email.
It's your duty as an applicant to provide them with material that in few seconds can convince them you're worth of joining Getty.

These guys see 1000s of amazing images per day.
They can spot in a flash if you're great, good, or mediocre : it's their work full time job and they know their job.

It doesn't mean your images suck, it can simply mean they had a look and thought "yet another guy  shooting business/lifestyle".

You can't blame them, there's so much people shooting the same stuff as you and Yuri and what you see on Getty is usually
pretty expensive stuff done by professionals investing lots of money on this, you can't easily compete with them or adding
something new and special unless you're very talented and gifted.

Did such considerations as "What the customers want" and "At the price they can afford to pay" ever come into the calculations?

It does now of course. Yesterday I got an email from John Lewis, a premium department store in the UK, which included this Getty image available for just �5.

http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/76688714/Rubberball-Productions

I am talented and gifted.  Unfortunately I am also lazy.

I've read recently about a guy in the Alamy forum selling a pic on Getty for 60.000$ (an advertising with eleephants),
try to do that with Alamy or micros...

Pretty much every week someone or even several people in the UK become rich after winning the lottery. It happens all the time although, at odds of 14M to 1, it is probably not worth relying on it as income.

Geez, macrosaur, one day you're saying "earning from RM are flat or decreasing a bit, no more no less", and the next you're saying "RM is bleeding money". Guess I convinced you, huh?

As for Getty trying to bankrupt their competitors, if that's their goal they would have come up with something much better than Thinkstock. What they've done is offered a minimally-functional site that offers only their least valuable assets - they've invested as little as possible into it. It's pretty clear - at least to my way of thinking - that all they're doing right now is testing the microstock subscription market. That's not "harakiri".

If Getty was as ruthless as everyone seems to think they are, they'd have done something revolutionary to kill their competition: drastically lower their RF/RM pricing to be competitive with microstock. But they're not doing that, are they?

We are in the midst of a very deep recession. There are many good arguements being made that business will never return to normal even as the economy grows. It's hard to say until we reach that point what will happen. I think it is easy to say we must increase our revenue growth for 2010 but not so easy to actually accomplish it.

From my vantage point, this is microstock's "happy time": revenue is up, competition is down, and management is thinking innovatively.
I know it's not going to last forever, but I'm enjoying it while it's here.

Dug this out of my email, dated 12/28/05...

"Thank you for your submission to Getty Images, and giving us the opportunity to review your imagery.  However, after careful consideration, our submission review team has decided that your work does not match our needs at this time.  You may like to consider getting in touch with PACA (The Picture Archive Council of America), at www.stockindustry.org, who will be able to direct you to other Stock Agencies who might be interested in reviewing your images."

At Getty I wasn't accepted the first time too, updated my website half a year later, applied and bingo. Also there are different channels to join Getty, nowadays I rarely use the direct creative channel much to complicated and labour-intense. I'm a long-term Corbis Contributor but with a tiny portfolio. Also I'm in a small cutting edge Macro library which performs amazingly well ( a par with Getty and Corbis). But most of the stuff Sean and Lisa produces doesn't fit to today's macro-market so I don't wonder that they didn't get accepted, but if you prepare them a creative portfolio with fresh ideas and not to mainstream you will get accepted at every macro agency - it's up to you.

As a side note, I flew to NYC (live in Vancouver) to present my portfolio in person to agencies. I got accepted. Have you read The Outliers.? Interesting read.

...
Getty was bought for 2400 million of which 50 million was for iStock. One is a lot the other is dinky. I see some major disparity there. Either the investors got ripped off or Getty got a huge bargain on iStock. These prices are largely based on present and future earning potential.

iStock was purchased in Feb 2006 for $50M. Getty was purchased 2.1/2 years later for $2.4B, when iStock annual revenue was already eclipsing its purchase price.
Yes, there is a major disparity in the price. iStock was certainly a bargain, but I'm not so sure Getty was.